Twitter love stories

I’ve had dating and love on the brain of late … unfortunately not because of some romantic happenings in my life (boo hoo hoo). No I’ve been thinking about the digital space and dating.

Online dating is seemingly becoming more and more prolific, especially for my generation of late 20s to 30 somethings. It’s now practically the normal way to meet people. So then I started pondering if this is the same in other cultures? What is dating like in other cultures and how is the digital age aiding/hindering this?

Having lived in Japan, I know that dating over there is a whole different ball game. I mean they don’t even really have the words I love you and when I tried to just hug a friend I thought he might die of embarrassment.

In Japan, what they do have which I know about is something called – Konpa (don’t know how you spell this, but that’s the idea). Konpa is where two couples go out and essentially have a double date, in the hope that at least two of them will pull. It’s a lot more regimented that British let’s-get-drunk-and-slober-on-each-other styles. They also have the firmly held belief that women over 30 are ‘Obachan’. Translation – grandmothers. Nice. I wonder how hard the dating game is for these ladies, and ultimately are they using the online space to break down traditional boundaries?

Secondly, I was wondering if anyone has met anyone online via Twitter. ‘Oooh we were thousands of miles apart, but we met on twitter and fell in love in 140 words’.

Both of these cases are very interesting stories in my book. Book… book?